neighbourhood

39.1. Short description In the summer of 2011, several so-called “work corporations” (werkcorporaties) started operating in the municipality of Nijmegen. These work corporations aim at re-employing social assistance (Wet Werk en Bijstand, or WWB) receivers with a considerable distance from the labour market by offering them a place where they can combine work and education.…

40.1. Short description Housing corporation Portaal, together with the municipality of Nijmegen, started the project “A Future for Everybody” in 2009 because the province (Gelderland) reserved money for the development of “innovative living arrangements” within a larger programme. It was not stated clearly what was meant by “innovative living arrangements”, but the focus had to…

41.1. Short description In 2009, three Moroccan fathers in Nijmegen saw that successful “neighbourhood father” projects were running in other cities in the Netherlands. Together with a local welfare worker from Tandem Welfare they visited such a project in The Hague to see how it was organised. The fathers thought that such an initiative could…

Sustainability Although all innovations were, at least at the start, dependent on public funding, an explicit wish exists among members of all three projects to continue even if financial resources dry up. However, this urge to be self-sufficient was driven by different logic. Work corporations would prefer to earn revenues of their own because the…

Local background of the social innovations Over time, a strongly left-wing political culture emerged in Nijmegen. Its key values related to the protection of the less well off: solidarity, equal opportunities to participate in society and the urge for an “undivided” city. Over the past few years, a fear of increasing divisions between residents in…